This invention relates to the field of liquid sprayers, and, more particularly, to the field of liquid sprayers having an electrical motor driving a pump.
Sprayers have been generally used to spray liquids in order to atomize as fine droplets a liquid. The atomization of a liquid enables better coverage of a surface by the liquid. Usually, sprayers comprise a container which is used to store the liquid and which is connected to a sprayer head. The sprayer head usually includes a trigger which activates a pump that drives the liquid to the nozzle which, in turn, atomizes the liquid. These sprayers are manually activated and require the user to push the trigger several times as long as she wishes to spray the liquid. In addition to requiring the user to push the trigger several times, those manually activated sprayers can only maintain a uniform pattern of spray for a relatively short period of time. One of the improvements made to the sprayers was to incorporate an electrical motor connected to a switch and a portable voltage source to them. This type of electrical sprayer only requires the user to push the trigger once and maintain the trigger pushed as long as the user wants to spray liquid. It is common to have a sprayer with a nozzle having at least two positions and which operates as a check valve. A first position usually prevents a liquid to flow through the nozzle and a second position allows the liquid to flow through the nozzle, which in turn, allows the user to spray the liquid. Typically, the user simply rotates the nozzle to move the nozzle from the first to the second position and vice versa. Once the user has finished spaying the liquid, she can simply rotate the nozzle back to its first position. Other types of nozzles include a hinged gate member that the user can flip to allow or prevent a liquid to be sprayed. These nozzles prevent a liquid from flowing out of the sprayer in case the sprayer is accidentally tilted from its upright position. However, it has been found that very often when the user has finished spraying a liquid, she does not use these safety mechanisms. It can easily be contemplated that in the case of an electrical sprayer, the use of electrical components such as a switch, a motor and a voltage source makes those electrical sprayers sensitive to liquid which might be responsible of malfunction of the device in the event the liquid comes in contact with those components. As a result, another problem faced with those electrical sprayers is to provide a device which can limit the risk that the liquid to be sprayed might enter in contact with the electrical components without requiring any extra step to be accomplished by the user.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for an electrical sprayer which limits the risk of malfunction due to contacts between a liquid to be sprayed and electrical components and also limits the risk of spills which can cause damages to the skin or to property.
A liquid sprayer is provided. In one non-limited embodiment, the liquid sprayer includes a bottle having an opening and a sprayer housing attached to the bottle. This sprayer housing includes an electrical motor, a voltage source for powering the electrical motor, a pump driven by the motor, a switch for completing an electrical circuit, a nozzle mechanism attached to the sprayer housing for spraying a liquid and a venting mechanism comprising a vent housing and a translating piston. The sprayer housing also includes a trigger movably connected to the sprayer housing for closing the switch, translating a piston and creating a leak-tight seal by squeezing a pump discharge tube. A pump supply tube extends from the opening of said bottle to an inlet of the pump and the pump discharge tube extends from the outlet of the pump to an opening of the nozzle mechanism. The pump discharge tube is flexible and deformable so that it can be optionally, but preferably, bent to form a loop around a pole member fixedly positioned between the outlet of the pump and the discharge outlet of the nozzle mechanism.